Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg has a piece over at The American Spectator that may surprise big government liberals. (We know you read this blog.) In “Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America,” he lays out the history of Sweden’s social democracy — its nature and its effects on the country’s economy — and then draws lessons for the United States. The Scandinavian country isn’t quite the pinko nanny state Americans like to look down upon, and we’ve missed their...

mentary this week addresses the demonstrations in New York and in other cities against free enterprise and business. One of the main points I make in this piece is that “lost in the debate is the fundamental purpose of American government and the importance of virtue and a benevolent society.” Here is the list of demands by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. It is in essence a laundry list of devastating economic schemes and handouts. Additionally, the demands are counter...

I’m pleased to announce that the first fruits of the Kuyper Common Grace Translation project are ing, in the form of Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art. This is the first selection out of the larger three-volume set that will appear plete translation in English. This book consists of 10 chapters that the Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper had written to be the conclusion of his three-volume study mon grace. But due to a publisher’s oversight,...

Congress insults our intelligence when it tells us that Chinese currency games are to blame for our trade deficit with that country and unemployment in our own. Legislators might as well propose a fleet of men-o’-war to navigate the globe and collect all its gold: economics is not a zero-sum game. An exchange on yesterday’s Laura Ingraham Show frames the debate nicely. The host asked Ted Cruz, the conservative Texan running for U.S. Senate, what he thought about the Chinese...

Religion & Liberty’s summer issue featuring an interview with Metropolitan Jonah (Orthodox Church in America) is now available online. Metropolitan Jonah talks asceticism and consumerism and says about secularism, “Faith cannot be dismissed as partmentalized influence on either our lives or on society.” Mark Summers, a historian in Virginia, offers a superb analysis of religion during the American Civil War in his focus on the revival in the Confederate Army. 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest conflict. With...

I’m at the “Whole Life Discipleship: Integrating Faith, Economics, and Work” conference today at Regent University. As I have the opportunity today, I’ll blog (and tweet) some of the lectures. First up is Stephen Grabill of the Acton Institute, and here are some highlights: He focused on three basic questions: What is political and economic freedom? How do we use Scripture in our approach to social life? What about natural law? On the first: A Christian anthropology is anti-revolutionary in...

Entrepreneurs take risks, they see opportunities that others do not, and they turn those opportunities into businesses. It’s perhaps counterintuitive, but this risk-taking actually requires stable social foundations. Entrepreneurs need to know that ground is solid before they risk a jump. Read More… There is great enthusiasm for entrepreneurship these days. There are social entrepreneurs, intellectual entrepreneurs, educational entrepreneurs and even intra-preneurs (entrepreneurs within their panies). Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are held up as model citizens. Magazines...

Billionaire Democrat Ted Leonsis wrote a posting titled “Class Warfare – Yuck!” on his blog yesterday, in which he implored the president, to whose campaign he donated the maximum amount: “Hit a reset button ASAP. Rethink how to talk to businesses and sell business leaders on your plan to make America great! Many of us want to be a part of the solution. We aren’t the problem.” Today, Charles Schwab published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and...

On The Freeman, PowerBlog contributor Bruce Edward Walker marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and the essay “The Initiates” published a decade later in The God that Failed. As Walker notes, “it’s a convenient opportunity to revisit both works as a reminder of what awaits all democratic societies eager to abandon liberties for the sake of utopian ideologies.” Koestler’s Noon, he says, is where the author is at the height of his powers...

The green tech firm Solyndra secured at $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 and was touted as an example of a promising green future. A month ago, pany went bankrupt. Here are the top five lessons we should learn from Solyndra’s collapse. 5. Both sides of the aisle are involved. Republican support of federal “investment” is routine — in fact, the DOE program that made Solyndra’s loan was approved by President Bush. It is true that Solyndra’s original application...